10 Fan Theories That Put Interesting Spins On Your Favourite '80s Cartoons

2. Optimus Prime Was The Six Million Dollar Robot In Transformers

Optimus Prime's origins differ between continuities, but in the 1980s Generation 1 cartoon, he was originally Orion Pax. In War Dawn - a season two episode of the show - a group of Autobots travelled back nine million years to Cybertron's past, where they encountered a naive dock worker called Orion Pax.

Pax idolised Megatron, but, when Megatron entered the warehouse he was working in, the would-be villain drained it of its massive energy reserves, killed Pax and his girlfriend, stole a load of equipment and fled.

Luckily, the future Autobots ensured Pax was brought back to life, with some hefty enhancements, and he became Optimus Prime. He was effectively better, stronger and faster; a fan theory states, therefore, that Optimus Prime is the Transformers universe version of the Six Million Dollar Man - an exact alternate universe parallel of Steve Austin himself.